False Confessions: What would it take to make you confess?

by: John Terzano - The Justice Project

Tue Jul 14, 2009 at 09:13

Most people find it hard to understand how anyone could ever confess to a crime they did not commit. But it happens over and over again. False confessions are a well-documented reality, especially among vulnerable populations like juveniles and the mentally-impaired. Of all the DNA exonerations nationwide, false confessions occur in over 20 percent of them.

Last week, two major newspapers highlighted two different cases where the confessions of the defendants had been called into question.